“Why doesn’t Congress get some successful business people together and re-invent the Postal Service?”

“Cut the mail service down to three days and make a real difference. The only reason I am forced to go to the mailbox now is because it is crammed with junk mail and coupons that go straight to the trash.”

“I just received a notice from my health care provider informing me that beginning in April, my monthly premiums will be reduced by $31 and my yearly deductible is cut in half for the same coverage. It can’t be because of ObamaCare because everybody hates that, so it’s got to be that I am just a great guy.”

“There is an automotive virus going around and it seems to have affected every turn signal in this city. “

“Turn your lights on in the rain! It’s the law! And why make the law if you’re not going to enforce it?”

“Anyone remember Mrs. Mumford who taught first grade at May Howard in the late ’50s?”

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It amuses me that the Affordable Care Act can get changed by Frank Luntz and the GOP/TP to ObamaCare and then they are trying every way they can to make it ObamaScare. A good friend of mine said to me last week that she didn’t see how she could afford to give health care insurance to all her employees. I know she has a nice business going but when I ask her if she had 50 or more employee and she said no. Needless to say she was relieved to find out she wouldn’t have to cover her employees with HCI. It is sad that there is a lot of misinformation out there that people believe it.

One of the reasons almost no one uses its official name is that it will only be more "affordable" for a small part of the population (those who needed insurance but truly couldn't afford it). For the rest of us, it will be like every other government program to date: bloated, overpriced and having very little to do with improving "care". Obama's name SHOULD be permanently attached to it for as long as taxpayers tolerate it.

There is nothing wrong with the current management of the Postal Service. FedEx's revenues would experience a huge drop, and they'd be flying nearly empty planes if the USPS stopped contracting with them to ship mail. They are not wizards, rather, they are subsidized by government contracts. The reality is that no private business would undertake to do what the Postal Service does: Delivering mail from Maine to Alaska for 46 cents. In addition, my own personal experience has been that USPS Express Mail is significantly more reliable than my Fedex deliveries have been.

The real problem, which I posted a few days ago, bears repeating:

The major cause of USPS financial shortfalls is the so-called "Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006" required the Postal Service to pre-fund healthcare benefits of future retirees, a 75-year liability, over a 10-year period. That's right -- prepayment for postal employees that have not even been born yet. The Postal Service is inexplicably the only federal agency or private business under this onerous obligation.

The requirement costs the Postal Services $5.5 billion a year. Without the pre-funding requirement, the Postal Service would have broken even financially despite mail volume declines. With it, however, the Postal Service is moving toward default -- a manufactured crisis that could give the privatizers and profiteers in Congress an opportunity to "restructure" America's oldest independent public service.

Although its business environment is difficult, the Post Office would not be "broke" if not for the aforesaid legislation. This is a crisis created by powerful politicians who seem to want to privatize the Postal Service. However, private businesses would never take on the task of operation of post offices and daily mail delivery in rural areas and remote areas with low population density. That is a job no one but our postal service has ever been willing to undertake.

So, don't be led astray by articles telling you that the USPS' difficulties are all explained by allegedly low mail volume. In reality, much of it was manufactured in Congress.

This newspaper is more likely to go out of business than "Obamacare" being repealed. Good piece of legislation that will be tweaked over time to be even better. A Republican idea that came to fruition mostly by Democrats.